Fox, WBD, Disney to Team Up for Possible Game-Changing Sports Streaming App

[Mark Jeffries]

The service, to come in the fall, will have MLB (except the AppleTV+ and Peacock packages), NFL (except Sunday Night Football), NBA and NHL games, along with a ton of college games (including the NCAA men's and women's basketball tourneys) and whatever else the Worldwide Leader can throw in--no name, launch date or pricing announced:

https://www.thewrap.com/fox-warner-bros-discovery-disney-sports-streaming-joint-venture/

[Mark Jeffries]

As you've probably figured out, this doesn't include--as of now--CBS' NFL and NCAA coverage.

[Jim Ellwanger]

It also doesn't appear to include local MLB, NBA, and NHL broadcasts (aside from out-of-market NHL broadcasts that are already available on ESPN+). If they could get the in-market streaming rights to those -- which would involve negotiations with the teams and the current rights holders, e.g., Bally Sports in some areas -- it would be a definite cable killer.

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[Adam Bowie]

The interesting thing here will be to see how much all this costs. Because I suspect it'll be fairly pricey. 

I can't see it being much less than $50 a month, considering the numbers floating around for ESPN on its own were around $30-35. I believe that Bleacher Report is going to be a $9.99 upcost on Max when they start charging for it. 

The thing is that sports rights are a fixed cost, so there must be lots of price modelling going on to work out how many people would subscribe at various prices - x million at $30, y million at $40, z million at $50. But if the maths don't work, then the price is wrong.

Would $49.99 be an attractive price to cord cutters? Assuming it's everything the three players have to offer.

And any extra channels that get added to the mix will surely drive this price up. And adding in RSNs would surely be insanely complicated to factor in.

By way of comparison, in the UK, if I want Sky Sports channels as a standalone streaming offer, it costs £34.99 a month ($44.10 tax inclusive). But that doesn't include rival TNT Sports who have some Premier League games and Champions League games as well as plenty other sports. Standalone, that costs another £30.99 ($39 tax inclusive) for a Discovery+ Premium package. That gets you most, but not all sports. And while there are packages available on various platforms to reduce this cost, it gives you a good idea of what you might have to pay.

I'm guessing that CBS isn't part of this at the moment because their parent company is essentially up for sale. Maybe jumping into this plan might complicate a potential sale down the line since the new owner might have their own plan for company's sports rights.

Adam

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[PGage]

From the article:

“Pricing details and a name for the service will be disclosed at a later date, though an individual familiar with the matter told TheWrap that the price point would be cheaper than YouTube TV, which charges $72.99 per month for its basic plan. CNBC reported a logical starting point could be $45-$50 per month.”

This only begins to make sense in a world in which ESPN, TNT and ABC are no longer available in linear form. Why would I even think of paying $50 a month for what I can get included for $75 a month, plus the other half of the NFL games, more golf, Olympics, and MLB, plus well,  erything else one currently thinks of as “TV” (News, broadcast networks, local stations, basic cable).

The bargain that has always felt like was out there somewhere was cable TV without ESPN and its huge cost for non sports fans. This service implies that the cost of cable TV ( or at least a streamed version of it on YT-TV) without ESPN and TNT is $25/ month. This seems like an even better deal than most non sports fans dreamt of ( plus they still get about half the Sunday NFL games if they want).

As a sports fan, I’ll take my cake and eat it too for $25 more per month.

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[Adam Bowie]

I guess it's all about the maths.

When there were 100m cable homes each paying, say, $7 a month for ESPN regardless of whether they watched it or not because it was "part of the bundle", ESPN could be both very profitable AND dig deep for sports rights.

To make the same money in a streaming world, they would need all 100m to pay that relative bargain $7. But if only 25m sign up, a number that might be considered a success, then they'd have to charge $28 a month to be as profitable as they were before.

Obviously, there'd actually be a blend of cable and streaming revenues for the foreseeable future, as cable subs diminish and streaming subs grow.

But given the next round of the NBA rights are up right now, with the NBA looking at a healthy increase in fees, that putative $28 becomes less profitable than it was. Now rinse and repeat for TNT and Fox Sports, and you get big numbers quickly. 

I assume in reality they'll be bundling this service with Max, Disney+, Hulu and whatever Fox has (?), to get to $65-70 and, yeah, you have cable TV. I suppose it at least comes with only a month-to-month commitment, and it'll be packaged to *feel* different to cable, since this is surely aimed as much as anything at those who've never even had a cable subscription. But I've no doubt that there'll be deals for 12 month subscriptions etc.

Adam

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[Tom Wolper]

I think the only way you can get sports fans to pay that level of monthly prices is to have home games available. I get ESPN+ as part of the Hulu bundle and I can watch NHL games with every team except my home team. My friend, who just got rid of his $230 a month cable subscription, was happy to pay Fubo $75 a month to have access to home team hockey games. I can’t say that will be the general experience but I feel that the new sports streaming service is for out of market games only a large mass of sports fans won’t sign up.

There is a possible synergy which I personally hate. Sports betting companies have an interest in having as many games as possible available to their customers and they could subsidize the service to keep retail costs down. Their presence at sporting events would probably be more obnoxious than it already is but it would keep the service affordable.

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[PGage]

I have been reading a bit about this, and the main thing that comes through is they still don’t really know what they are doing with this. For some reason they had a need to announce this as a placeholder, while they figure out the details.  

As Adam suggests, a lot of those details surround how the next round of sports rights plays out. Almost certainly this means WBD is dedicated to keeping the NBA, which will be a big price tag - and I wonder if they plan to announce all or many NBA games will only be available on Max. This would make having access via the new sports streamer a savings. Will ESPN then also make all or some MLB or NFL only on Hulu or Disney+, creating a similar savings?

Also, does this mean Zaz really is determined to get Paramount, and add its NFL, Golf and whatever else to the new bundle?

I’m going to have Max and the Disney bundle no matter what, so still not clear to me why I would pay $50 for sports I already have access to. But I begin to see there may be a segment of the population that only wants sports, not premium entertainment streaming, and may one day soon (not today) find $50 a month for the Sports Blob is preferable to something like YT-TV, Max and Disney Bundle (which would be around what, $100/month?). Is that segment large enough to make a lot of profit? I suspect that is also one of the things they really don’t know.

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[Adam Bowie]

So it sounds like it's going to cost $50 a month according to Lachlan Murdoch.

https://www.threads.net/@pkafka/post/C4G76nFvjjo/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Which is precisely what I guessed it would cost :-)

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[Adam Bowie]

And the real price for what is now known as Venu, has now been revealed as being... $42.99. 

So a bit cheaper than my $50 guess.

https://deadline.com/2024/08/price-of-espn-fox-wbd-sports-streaming-bundle-venu-1236028650/

"Linear networks offered via Venu include ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS and truTV. Programming from ESPN+ and on-demand fare from all three partners are also part of the offering."

Maybe downgrading the value of TNT and TBS when WBD loses NBA rights - assuming they don't win their legal fight to "match" Amazon.

Adam